December 8, 2018

With Christmas Holiday season in full swing, just a small group got together to work on the North American Eagle. Cory Mitchell, Trish Wood, Lars Pedersen, Zac Hopkins, Von Armstrong, Dan Zlock, Omar Chramosta, Dale Zlock, Steve Rima, and Keith Zanghi were all bundled up as the Northwest has settled into winter weather. Working virtual this week was Brandyn Bayes.

Dale Zlock, Lars Pedersen and Dan Zlock

For the past week, Lars Pedersen has been searching for a left hand 5/16 x 24 bolt or rod stock….something with this unique thread. He needed it for a rod link that needed to be replaced. What turned out to be a simple job became a frustrating experience by the end of the week. So when Dan and Dale Zlock (Zlock Racing) showed up at 8 am to see how Lar’s day was going, they heard the story about the 5/16 fastener. It turns out that Dale uses them in his custom golf clubs, to attach the head to the shaft. He explained that if you use a right-hand thread on a golf club the head will come loose, so that is why you use a left-hand thread. It turns out Dale had a ton of 5/16 left-hand threads at his shop less than a mile away. Ten minutes later Dale returned and Lar’s day got a whole lot better!

Von Armstrong and Jason Mitchell

Zac Hopkins

This weekend the team spent most of the day doing the most mundane, boring work on the planet earth; separating fasteners! Over the years our nuts, bolts, screws, and rivets have somehow gotten mixed up. Today we took the time to sort and separate them into specific bins. The job borders on making your mind go crazy, or giving us all a small case of OCD! In the end, it looked pretty good and everyone felt good about themselves! Next week we won’t have a work party, we’ll be having a Christmas party. It is always fun, and we’ll show highlights of that instead.

It was 2012, and the team was at the Alvord Dry Lake Bed in SE Oregon. The only problem was, there was nothing dry about the Alvord Dry Lake Bed! In fact, the weather that week was terrible. “We had everything in the bible except locusts!” Keith Zanghi liked to say. This photo was taken on the 2nd day, with Ed and Steve getting rescued out of the mud! Wherever you walked, the mud would build up on the bottom of your shoes, and for the short guys, it was kind of nice to be six feet tall!

Day 1

On day one we unloaded the Eagle and were so excited to be able to run the next day. We awoke to a torrential downpour. In the next few days we had snow, sleet, and high winds. Ed Shadle kept the team spirits high and got us all to laugh and have fun. During the week we eventually were able to run the car, but more importantly, we turned lemons into lemonade, designed a new barn for ranch owner Paul Davis, got a class on cattle ranching, and learned we needed to install cooling on our magnetic brake rotors…not a bad week! Below are some photos from that memorable week we spent with Ed.

LeMay Family Collection is a long time sponsor of the North American Eagle®

Click on the photo above for video

God Bless and Protect our Troops

About

The North American Eagle project began as nothing more than an idea. That idea was to take a jet fighter, and turn it into the fastest racing machine in history. Together, Ed Shadle and Keith Zanghi founded a project with a goal to go supersonic, and break the World Land Speed Record of 763 MPH. Along the way, countless people have joined together to push the boundaries of speed, to see just how fast this car can go.

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